White Pepper (Aceh) (Dutch: witte peper) was a high-value export spice of the Acehnese sultanate and later of the colonial residency of Atjeh, derived from the ripe red pepper berries (Dutch: roode bessen) of the pepper bunch (Dutch: pepertros) by a labour-intensive water-treatment process (Dutch: weekproces) that removed the outer fruit flesh (Dutch: vruchtvlees) and left only the smooth greyish-white seed kernel. Together with black pepper, it formed the backbone of Aceh’s pre-colonial trade with Europe and the Islamic world, and was one of the principal commodities through which the sultanate projected economic power across the Strait of Malacca in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. After the Aceh War of 1873 and the pacification, white pepper remained a premium smallholder export of the Groot-Atjeh and West Coast of Atjeh districts until its gradual decline in the early twentieth century.
Cultivation and the pepper bunch
The pepper vine (Piper nigrum) was trained up living support trees in the pepper gardens (Dutch: pepertuinen) that surrounded every Acehnese village in the pepper districts. The berries were borne in long, slender bunches (Dutch: pepertros), each containing 50 to 150 berries, and could be harvested at three stages of maturity: unripe, yielding black pepper after sun-drying; fully ripe, yielding the red berries that were the raw material of white pepper; or, less commonly, an intermediate stage producing so-called red pepper (Dutch: roode peper).
The choice between black and white pepper production was a market decision. White pepper, requiring the additional water-treatment step, commanded a premium price and was favoured for the European table-trade in lightly coloured sauces and condiments; black pepper, being simpler to produce, dominated the bulk trade. A skilled Atjeh smallholder would allocate part of each vine’s harvest to the white-pepper process and part to the black, depending on the relative prices prevailing at the next market day.
The water-treatment process
The processing technique that distinguished white pepper from black was the water-treatment (Dutch: weekproces). The fully ripe red berries were harvested from the pepertros and placed in woven palm-leaf baskets, which were then submerged in slow-running water — typically in a stream or in a specially constructed soaking-tank (Dutch: weekbak) — for five to seven days. During this period the soft outer fruit flesh (Dutch: vruchtvlees) fermented and rotted, softening into a mucilaginous mass that could be rubbed away from the seed beneath.
After the soaking period the berries were removed from the water, trampled underfoot or rubbed by hand in a wooden trough (Dutch: wreefbak) to detach the loosened flesh, and washed in clean water to leave only the smooth greyish-white seed kernel. The washed kernels were then spread on palm-leaf mats in the sun to dry for several days, during which they shrank slightly and developed the characteristic pale, slightly wrinkled surface of the commercial white peppercorn. The drying ratio was approximately four to one: four kilograms of fresh ripe berries yielded about one kilogram of dried white pepper.
The alternative product, black pepper, was made by drying the unripe berries directly without water-treatment; the dark, shrivelled fruit flesh remained attached to the seed, producing the familiar wrinkled black peppercorn of commerce.
Market role and historical trade
White pepper commanded a higher price than black pepper on account of its milder flavour and was primarily used for table seasoning in European markets, where the pale colour of the ground pepper was preferred in white sauces, cream soups, and the lightly coloured dishes of French and Italian cuisine. The European pharmaceutical trade also used white pepper in the preparation of medicinal preparations, on account of its slightly higher piperine content per unit of weight.
Historically, white pepper was a cornerstone of Aceh’s trade with European markets and with the VOC in the seventeenth century, when the sultanate was one of the principal pepper suppliers of the Indian Ocean network. The VOC factors at Kota Radja regularly noted that “Atchinse witte peper” commanded a premium over the produce of Java and the Malabar coast. The pepper revenues of Atjeh remained significant enough that the Encyclopaedisch Bureau, in its 1913 survey of the Buitenbezittingen landschapskassen, recorded a peperhasil of f 125,000 for the Atjeh and Dependencies landschapskas — the largest miscellaneous pepper revenue of any Buitenbezittingen gewest.
Decline of the Acehnese pepper trade
The quality and volume of Acehnese white pepper declined markedly in the late nineteenth century owing to insufficient agronomic practices, disease in the older plantings, and competition from European-managed pepper gardens on Java and Bangka. The protracted Aceh War from 1873 disrupted cultivation, destroyed pepper gardens, and drove smallholders from the land; many of the older pepper terraces were abandoned during the guerrilla phase of the war and never replanted. The opening of the Atjeh railway and the Gajo Road in the early twentieth century accelerated the shift away from pepper toward rubber, copra, and palm oil cultivation. The Agrarische Wet 1870 (Agrarian Law of 1870), by allowing European leasehold estates on indigenous land, also contributed to the displacement of the smallholder pepper economy.
By the 1930s white pepper had ceased to be a major Acehnese export, though it remained a smallholder crop in parts of the interior and a premium product in the surviving pepper gardens of the West Coast and Pidië districts.
See Also
- Black Pepper (Aceh)
- Pepper Bunch
- Atjehsche peper- en pinanghasil
- Sultanate of Acheh
- Aceh War
- Pacification of Aceh
- Agrarische Wet 1870
- Atjehsche Staatsspoorwegen
- Gajoweg
- Dutch East India Company
- Java
- Bangka
- 1913
- 1930
Source
DLP-84-Atjeh.pdf, pp. 13-14.